0.50 lbs of Crystal 120
2.0 oz of Galena at 60mins
1.0 oz of Kent Goldings at 30 mins
1.0 oz of Kent Goldings at 15 mins
White Labs English Ale 005 Yeast
Above is a recipe for an English IPA, borrowed from John Palmer's How to Brew. The extract version of this recipe was the first I ever brewed with, so I thought it would be fitting to make it my first all-grain recipe as well. I ran it through BeerTools after doing the actual brewing, and was surprised to see the bittnerness level. It was basically twice as much the amount that is recommended for an English IPA.
I purchased the recipe ingredients the day before and created a yeast starter. I approximated 6oz of Munton's Light DME which I boiled in 2 liters of water for ten minutes. Then I added about two pellets of Galena hops to the boil in order to make the mixture slightly acidic so the yeast will be better prepared for the next day's wort.
I checked on the yeast the next morning and it was churning away, looking healthy and vigorous.
I used the afternoon the next day to clean and sanitize the materials I was using. They soaked in bleach water for 20 minutes and then I let them air dry. I had some errands to run and wouldn't be able to begin brewing until later that night.
Starting with the actual brewing, I brought about 4 gallons of water to 165 degrees. The 4 gallons is not an arbitrary number. It is calculated by taking the amount of grain (10.5 lbs) multiplying it by 1.5 (the suggested ratio of water to grain) to find out how many quarts of water to use (10.5 * 1.5 = 15.75). Convert quarts to gallons (15.75 / 4 = 3.9375), and you got about 4 gallons. Precision is always appreciated, but not exactly necessary when brewing beer.
Prior to heating these 4 gallons, I brought about a gallon of water to boil and dumped that into the cooler beforehand in order to preheat the mashtun. This would prevent a drastic temperature loss later on.
I poured all 4 gallons of water into the cooler and then dumped the grain in slowly. Palmer recommends dumping in 1 gallon and then gradually mixing the grain and water in together, but I'm an indepedent.
The temperature of the grain bed came in a little too low (145 - 148). So I added some hot water from the tea kettle to bring the temperature up. It was more difficult to bring up than I had expected, which might have been a problem for my brewing process. It eventually capped out at a little over 150. I think. I need to invest in a better thermometer.
I let the grain steep for an hour in the cooler, and then began to vorlauf. I took about a gallon off and poured it back into the cooler, and it began running clear. I was pretty happy with how the mash tun I constructed turned out. Thanks Keith Brown.
As the wort began to run out of the mash tun and into my fermenter, I started to transfer the 6 gallons of hot water I had ready onto the grain bed. The wort got lighter and lighter in color, and was pretty clear towards the end. I didn't actually finish pouring in all 6 gallons, as I was worried about having too much water in the pot. I took a gravity reading at this point and it registered at 1.030. To calculate the efficiency of the sparging, I multipled the gravity points (30) by the amount of wort collected (6 gallons), and then divided by the lbs of grain (10.5). I got 17.5, which is not good. I'm told you want around 30.
After that, the brewing process was back to normal. The only difference was that I had to bring 6 gallons of hot wort to boil instead of the 3 I normally do. Using the stove in my house took forever and I'll definitely be using some new equipment next time to speed up the process.
A turkey fryer is one piece of equipment that should help bring the wort to boil much faster. Another cool (no pun intended) brewing toy that many home brewers use is a wort chiller, but I have yet to shell out the $80 to buy one. Instead, I put the brew kettle in the snow outside for a while and then added ice directly to the wort. It was still really hot an hour later, so I left it until the morning (probably a bad idea). This is why it's recommended to give yourself plenty of time to brew. It got so late, that I just wanted to go to bed and deal with it in the morning.
The next morning, I took another gravity reading. It came out to 1.042 (better than before, but still under target). Then I pitched the yeast, closed up the fermenter and called it a day. I checked on the fermenter the following day and the airlock was bubbling away, which is a sign of healthy fermentation.
This is not meant as a guide for others on making beer, as there are too many of those already in existence. Instead, it's a place where I'm keeping notes to myself for future use. Things I've learned from this brew session and from additional research afterwards:
- Bring the strike water to 170+ before doughing in.
- Invest in a better thermometer.
- It's ok to leave the wort for a while as it chills. This will allow the trub to settle at the bottom of the bucket, and then you can siphon the liquid off the top which will result in a clearer wort.
- I need to read more on batch sparging and get a firmer grasp of that process.
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